Obama extends Myanmar sanctions

Pressure mounts to drop new charges against Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate.

16 May 2009 10:09 GMT

Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest was due to expire on May 27 [AFP]

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that she wants to find a "better way" to sway Myanmar's military leaders.

International outcry

Foreign ministers of the European Union last month also extended their sanctions against Myanmar for another year, but said they were ready to ease them and hold talks if there was democratic progress.

Myanmar was under intense international pressure on Friday to free Suu Kyi after she was imprisoned ahead of a new trial next week for breaching the terms of her house arrest.

The US and the United Nations led calls for the immediate release of the 63-year-old.

Suu Kyi is currently being held in Yangon's Insein prison after the military government charged her with violating the conditions of her house arrest.

Security forces took Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for most of the last two decades, from her lakeside home on Thursday after an American man swam to her lakeside residence.

She has so far been detained without trial for more than 13 of the last 20 years, with the military refusing to recognise her National League for Democracy party's landslide victory in the country's last elections in 1990.